The Crazy, Inexplicable Demand Revisited

It would be a great and fitting irony if the victory of Democratic scare tactics in NY-26 spooks other Republicans into backing off from bold deficit reform and reduction plans, which in turn forces Ryan into the presidential race—ultimately the Democrats’ worst nightmare. ~Bill Kristol

Yes, I can see them shaking in terror already. Who actually believes this? Are there people in Obama’s camp worrying about having to face a single-issue Congressman identified with a very unpopular budget that includes significant entitlement reform? It’s hard to see why they would. If the “scare tactics” succeed in getting other Republicans to flee from his plan, wouldn’t that be an indication that Ryan shouldn’t run? More to the point, if the “scare tactics” are working, wouldn’t that hint that Ryan’s candidacy is going to be unsuccessful?

In addition to having little credibility on fiscal responsibility thanks to past votes, he spent the better part of the last two years joining with his party leadership in attacking the Democratic health care legislation because it included cuts to Medicare. Technically, Ryan objected to these cuts because they were going to fund the provisions of the new legislation, and Ryan would say that his plan saves Medicare by preventing it from going bankrupt. It is possible that Ryan could persuade voters that these two positions are consistent, and that his previous opposition to Medicare cuts wasn’t simply an attempt to use the same “scare tactics” that he now decries when they are used against his plan. Indeed, the latest refrain from Ryan and his supporters is that opponents of the Ryan plan would prefer for Medicare to go bankrupt, and so even in defending their large cuts to the program they feel compelled to continue presenting themselves as defenders of Medicare.

Peter Suderman commented on the backlash to the Ryan plan earlier this week:

During the ObamaCare debate and the 2010 election, the party’s loudest, most frequent criticism of last year’s health care overhaul was that it cut Medicare. That was an effective message, but also a short-sighted one. Now as Republicans look for ways to reform Medicare on their own, their own words are coming back to haunt them.

As someone who would like to see Medicare overhauled along the lines that Ryan proposes, I can’t say it’s fun to watch. But the GOP—Rep. Ryan and a handful of others excepted—helped ensure that the Democrats’ current Medicare message would be popular and effective. One of the reasons Ryan knew what was coming, it’s safe to say, was that his own party had been there before.

The real trouble for Ryan wasn’t just his party that had been there before, but he personally used this line of attack.

Suppose Ryan heeds all of these absurd demands and joins the race. All of the declared and likely Republican candidates have already endorsed Ryan’s plan or something very much like it. His presence in the race will be redundant and could be harmful to him and his plan. Since everyone in the field already agrees with him, he would not be running to draw attention to entitlement reform and force the other candidates in his direction. At first, his rivals will bury him with praise. Everyone on the stage with him will say, “Chairman Ryan is doing outstanding work in Congress, and that is why he should go back there and continue what he started. When I am President, I look forward to working with Chairman Ryan on these and other important issues.” If Ryan actually wants to try to win the nomination, some of his more conservative rivals will then point out that he voted for all the bailouts and Medicare Part D, which will remind voters that his enthusiasm for fiscal responsibility and Medicare solvency is a fairly new thing. The more compromised “main contenders” that have similar problems in their record will embrace Ryan even more closely, but they will also be able to point to Ryan’s past votes to make their own flaws seem less important.

Unless Ryan scores some improbable victories in the primary process, the perception will be that Ryan took his message to Republican primary voters and it was rejected. That won’t be entirely true, since all of the candidates have more or less aligned themselves with his proposal, but it will be one more thing opponents of Ryan and his plan can throw at him. In the meantime, he will have wasted months on a fruitless presidential bid that could have been spent on legislative work. A Ryan candidacy will likely be about as successful as Fred Thompson’s, but its failure will have some significant consequences for Ryan’s ideas.

It is not unique to their party, but Republicans have a particularly bad habit of wanting to promote their new political talent too quickly. Many of their Senators and governors are barely in office before partisans begin building them up as possible VP or presidential candidates, and usually this means that the partisans want them to jump in as soon as possible before they have done anything. The calls for Ryan to run are an extreme form of this impulse to draft young politicians before they are ready. What is worse is that they are being driven by the delusion that Ryan’s plan is not politically toxic and sheer desperation on account of the perceived weaknesses of the other candidates.

Bill Kristol is unwittingly a snake oil salesman for Paul Ryan. I speculate that the only nominee President Obama would rather face than Paul “this guy wants to abolish Medicare” Ryan is Michele Bachmann, who also wants to abolish Medicare.

“These are the same people who gave us Ahmed Chalabi, the Liberator of Iraq.”

Don’t forget that Bill Kristol also gave us Sarah Palin. That former chief of staff for Dan Quayle certainly has an unsurpassed eye for talent.

Actually, Ryan impresses me as being far too smart to heed the siren calls of Kristol, et al. As far as Ryan instilling fear in the White House, I believe they still Jon Huntsman as their greatest nightmare, for reasons I have yet to fathom.

cfountain, depending on your point of view, he deserves credit for rallying opposition to the Clinton healthcare plan back in 1993-94 and for doing the same with regard to Obamacare in 2009-10. In the foreign policy arena, I can’t think of a thing where I thought he was right. But, as far as picking talent is concerned, he certainly has a preference for blank slates that are easily manipulable by “wiser” advisors. I don’t think he would have liked George Washington, and I am confident that the reverse would have been true.

@tbr: I can’t imagine Huntsman successfully navigating the primaries. (I can’t imagine Huntsman believing he will win – I’m convinced he’s running now to build credibility for 2016.) But if he does somehow emerge as next year’s nominee, Obama will have to limit criticism of his former employee to nuanced, qualified comments; the low-information portion of the voting public doesn’t get nuance.

Huntsman comes across as a good-natured moderate, with little baggage that would hurt him in the general election. Moderate Democrats and independents like the idea of bipartisan efforts, so Huntsman’s last job is a plus for them. Voters who like Obama personally but are anxious about jobs etc. may be more willing to switch to an affable ex-governor and Obama employee running on a competence platform than for a strident partisan.

Of course, fear of a Huntsman nomination could simply be a head-fake by the Obama campaign. Huntsman is dwarfed by several other candidates in name recognition; even with all his baggage, Romney probably still has a better shot.

“@tbr: I can’t imagine Huntsman successfully navigating the primaries. . .Of course, fear of a Huntsman nomination could simply be a head-fake by the Obama campaign. Huntsman is dwarfed by several other candidates in name recognition; even with all his baggage, Romney probably still has a better shot.”

MsChris, I agree on both points. I’m not even convinced he will run. If he runs and Romney loses the nomination as a result (hard to imagine Southern Evangelicals flocking to the Mormon Huntsman after rejecting the Mormon Romney), I think a lot of Mormons who strongly support Romney will not forgive Huntsman come 2016.

“I’m really tired of everyone (including the commentors here) talking about Huntsman. He has no chance, and if he does run he’ll be the Sam Brownback of this cycle. Obama isn’t fearing him. Nobody is.”

As I have made clear for some time now, I agree with Daniel that Huntsman has little chance of winning the Republican nomination and that his candidacy has largely been promoted by liberals in the MSM as a way to possibly derail Romney. Further confirmation of that view was seen on today’s Chris Matthews show where the question posed to the 12-member panel (totally dominated by liberal types) was which of the “three leading” Republican candidates (Romney, Pawlenty and Huntsman) had the best chance of defeating Obama in 2012. Not surprisingly, the results were Huntsman 8, Romney 2 and Pawlenty 2. http://www.thechrismatthewsshow.com/index.php

One further observation about today’s Chris Matthews Show. One of today’s participants was Elizabeth Bumiller of the NY Times who covers the White House for the Times (or did). In discussing Romney, she brought up all the “baggage” Romney has to carry, including the story of how Romney transported his dog on a family vacation in a dog carrier strapped to the roof of his family car that was filled with his wife and five sons. Wow! I can’t remember the last time a member of the MSM brought up the fact that Obama and his wife attended the sermons of the racially incendiary minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright and were only disturbed enough to distance themselves from Rev. Wright and quit his church after the media started playing some of Rev. Wright’s disturbing sermons. That important incident seems to have been swept completely under the rug.